Archive of Our Own ^beta

Candidates Announcement

The Organization for Transformative Works is pleased to announce the following candidates for the 2025 Election (in alphabetical order by given name):

• C. Ryan S.
• Elizabeth W.
• Harlan L.B.

Because we have 2 seats to be filled and 3 candidates, the 2025 election will be contested – that is, the members of the OTW will vote on which candidates fill the seats. The Elections Committee is excited to introduce the candidates to all of the members of the OTW! Included in this post are links to short Bios and Platforms written by the candidates. This post also marks the beginning of our Q&A period, during which we invite the public to submit questions for the candidates. Additionally, we will be holding a series of live chats – dates and times for those are to be announced based on candidate availability. Information on the voting period and how to vote will also be posted shortly. In the meantime, there is a timeline of Elections events available here for your reference. Read on to learn more about our candidates and how you can submit questions for them!

Platforms and Bios

We asked each candidate to provide us with a Bio that sums up their professional and fannish experience, as well as to write a Platform about their goals for their term on the Board by answering the following questions:

• Why did you decide to run for election to the Board?
• What skills and/or experience would you bring to the Board?
• Choose one or two goals for the OTW that are important to you and that you would be interested in working on during your term. Why do you value these goals? How would you work with others to achieve them?
• What is your experience with the OTW's projects and how would you collaborate with the relevant committees to support and strengthen them? Try to include a range of projects, though feel free to emphasize particular ones you have experience with.
• How would you balance your Board work with other roles in the OTW, or how do you plan to hand over your current roles to focus on Board work?

You can read both the candidates' answers to these questions and their bios by following the links below.

• C. Ryan S.
• Elizabeth W.
• Harlan L.B.

Question & Answer (Q&A)

To better accommodate the time constraints of the election and the workload for candidates, we are asking voters to limit to one question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded. Limit of three questions per person. Anyone may submit questions via the Elections form. Please submit all questions by 11:59pm UTC on June 29 (what time is that where I live?). All candidates will answer each question submitted, subject to the following restrictions:

• Questions must be a maximum of 50 words long.
• Any submitted questions repeating what is already addressed on Platforms will be ignored. This is to allow candidates to dedicate more time to answering new questions.
• Similar questions will be grouped together to avoid candidates giving repetitive answers. Elections volunteers will decide which questions are similar enough to group.
• If you have a follow-up to a Platform question, please specifically mention it is a follow-up so Elections volunteers know not to treat it as a repeat.
• One question per message. Additional questions in the same message will be discarded.
• Maximum of three questions per person.

The posting date for answers will be chosen depending on the number of questions received. Posts will be spread out, arranged by topic, to make it easier for voters to read all the answers.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Zixin Zhang has resigned from her role as a Board Director for personal reasons.

Zixin was elected to her seat in 2023 and her resignation is effective as of the 28th of April, 2025. As her term was set to end in a few months, her seat will be left open until this year's OTW elections and filled via the normal election process.

We would like to thank Zixin for her service as a member of the Board and for her years as an OTW volunteer. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Anh, who recently became a member of our Board of Directors.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Disclaimer: since being elected to the OTW Board in the summer of 2023, what I do now in September 2023 is quite different from what I did as an OTW volunteer previously. I imagine it will be an ever-evolving process, even after October.

I am a Fanlore Social Media & Outreach volunteer. Fanlore is an OTW project – a wiki with a mission of fannish history preservation that anyone can easily contribute to, run by fans and for fans. Our Social Media & Outreach team works with our in-house Graphic Designers to promote Fanlore on social media, particularly Tumblr and X/Twitter. I am also an Open Doors Import Assistant, whose tasks revolve around helping Open Doors volunteers with archive imports, such as searching AO3 for duplicate fanworks or manually posting fanworks from an archive backup to AO3.

As I've mentioned before, I'm also one of the newly elected OTW Board members; training for the Board is still ongoing so I'm learning the ropes. From what I've seen so far, Board members take turns handling email duty – making sure that incoming emails are properly categorised and labelled depending on content and urgency – and sometimes we need to vote on certain requests. We also have meetings with committee chairs. The Board typically holds public meetings on Discord four times per year, with one specifically being after the election for Board turnover. At the moment of writing this, we are in the process of setting a date for our October meeting. I'm looking forward to attending, this time as one of the sitting Board members *wink*!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

For Open Doors, depending on the period, we may receive both urgent and non-urgent tasks. On Sundays, my schedule is usually free enough for me to join one of our work parties – Open Doors folks agree to be online at the same time and chat while doing our tasks. During these parties, folks may ask for help with one thing or another; sometimes it's just all chatting. At other times, I may help with searching for duplicate fanworks on AO3 when I'm available, typically on Monday evenings.

For Fanlore, we have several different rosters and deadlines for dividing tasks amongst volunteers. I often collect all the tasks I need to finish in a week and tackle them all in one or two evenings. In contrast to Open Doors tasks – which I can do sporadically in my free time – I find myself tackling Fanlore tasks more productively if I have a clear objective and deadline.

My typical week as a volunteer since September looks kinda like this, in no particular order:

• Follow policy discussions on the internal chat tool
• "Chat" with my friends about the OTW 🐧
• If my schedule permits, attend the Fanlore meeting – complete some Fanlore tasks; attend one of the Open Doors work parties – complete some Open Doors tasks
• Continue Board training
• Socialise with my OTW friends, and help with tag translation on VoldeChat

What made you decide to volunteer?

I actually mentioned this in one of my candidate posts for the OTW 2023 election. I had wanted to volunteer for the Organisation since 2020, but the positions that interested me often caught me when I was in the middle of something. For example, I skipped at least 4 Tag Wrangling calls for volunteers because I was in the process of: being laid off, moving to the other side of the country, applying for new job(s), or more recently, running for Board!

Then, in 2022, Fanlore's call for volunteers went out, and I really wanted to add OTW volunteering to my resumé. Welp, it all started because I wanted to show off some internet hobbies and volunteering (for a nonprofit founded in 2007 that has always been remote-work-based) on my job application. I also had a vague idea about trying to join the OTW Board of Directors in the future, preferably after one to two years of volunteering, so that I could give back to the Organisation. A letter of reference written with the official OTW letterhead™ signed by committee chairs had sounded cool af for my down-to-earth job application package, because fandom is such a big part of my life. Adding the OTW Board of Directors would have made it certified BAMF.

But life seldom works the way we imagine. Never would I have predicted that my plans would come to fruition so soon, with my original timeline out of the window since May. If my life was a 'time travel ruin-it' fic, I'd go back in time and smack my-2022-naive-self for even thinking that running for the OTW Board of Directors election was 'cool'. Spoiler alert: it’s not, it’s not cool at all.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Nightmare. And I don't mean it metaphorically, or rhetorically, or poetically or theoretically or any other fancy way. I had a nightmare about/during the OTW election, no joke. People would tell you that this is just volunteering work: you can commit what you can, how you can, and you can leave whenever if it's too much, et cetera. But my lack of sleep is real, my exhaustion is real, my stressful weeks of watching something I've grown to love go up in flames – as long-standing problems within the Organisation reached a boiling point over the summer – is absolutely real. I've seen fellow volunteers, some of them my friends, share the same suffering. It baffles me that as a registered nonprofit for more than a decade, the OTW still lacks several necessary systems to protect our volunteers.

Again, I'm still learning the ropes around Board work, but I can sense the path to rebuild trust within the Organisation – between volunteers and people in leadership positions, as well as trust from outside user bases and members toward the OTW – is going to take time, effort, and be long and challenging. I also want to echo my previous discussion about Board work and how much a singular Board member can accomplish regarding structural changes within the OTW.

Fortunately, I'm not working alone; there are fellow volunteers and newly elected Board members who are trying to achieve change. I hope that, by being on the Board, I can help inspire and facilitate positive changes, plus maintain discussions and movements surrounding worthy causes, such as the racism issues within the OTW and improvements regarding transparency in both internal and external communication.

What fannish things do you like to do?

My friends often joke about me being a person who enjoys suffering creatively, several times over. I started drawing fanart in primary school, and I posted my first fanfic on a Manga-Anime forum when I was a teenager. I also dipped my toes in fan translation when I was in high school and started learning how to make fanvids/fansubs when I was a freshman in university.

Sadly, procrastination is my best-frenemy, so the only thing I can brag about nowadays is my privated-since-2015ish WordPress blog with nearly 1 million views, where I posted all my fan translations of C-novels and fanfic. I still translate fanworks on occasion, but I'm a byelingual – when you speak (more than) two languages but slowly lose vocabulary in all of them – so I either orphan-ed or anon-ed my translated fanworks on AO3.

I love crossover and crack/rarepairs, so I mostly create fanworks for these out-of-nowhere ships that nobody ships but me and two other people on [insert the social media platforms I use but stay between me and Cthulhu].

I love Fanlore though, especially the part about building and expanding Fanlore articles about my favourite characters and ships, or on very rare occasions – favourite fandoms. One thing I have to confess: I've 'spite-edited' certain article(s) on Fanlore 120+ times because it's about something I love and I want to prop it to the sky and back. Now, I just realised that apparently my flickering self-restraint and my spiteful energy are the two major forces behind my motivation, and sometimes obsession, with certain things, welp.

Also, in case I haven't made myself clear, I obviously love love LOVE reading fanfic. Please shower me with your crackiest crossover/rarepair fic recs, thank you. I and my Cthulhu bookmark keeper will be apocalyptically grateful.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is saddened to announce that Antonius Melisse and Natalia Gruber have resigned from the Board of Directors. Antonius's term was already scheduled to end in a few months, with his seat on track to be filled at the end of the current election season. However, Natalia still had two years to her term. Her seat will be added to the number of seats to be filled in the upcoming election.

Because the number of Board vacancies is now the same as the number of candidates, this year's OTW Board election will be uncontested. However, the election will still happen, on August 11 - 14, and OTW members will elect three candidates to serve a full-term (3 years) and two candidates to serve partial terms.

We would like to thank Antonius and Natalia for their service as members of the Board and wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

Edited to add: Board director Alex Tischer has also resigned from the OTW Board effective July 27th.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

In 2020, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) made a commitment to our users, members, and volunteers that we would work towards making our organization and our projects more welcoming and inclusive to fans of color, and preventing and combating racist harassment on our platforms.

Today, we'd like to provide an update on what steps we have taken so far to accomplish those goals, and what still needs to be done. But first, we have a duty to acknowledge that this work hasn't been nearly as prompt as we had hoped, and that the main victims of our delayed progress are the people of color who continue to suffer due to harassment and slow action. In May, fans organized a campaign against racism in the OTW, and we want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated. We hear and appreciate the people who continue to reach out to us, to share their ideas and their concerns, and to hold us accountable.

What We've Done So Far

Since the posting of our original plan in 2020, we have completed or made significant progress on a series of goals to help protect our users and volunteers against harassment:

• We implemented the ability to freeze comment threads and turn off comments on your works entirely, giving you more control to moderate interactions on your AO3 fanworks.
• User muting was introduced to help you avoid encountering works, bookmarks, or comments from specific users when browsing the Archive.
• We have implemented comment blocking to prevent specific logged-in users from commenting on your works entirely.
• You can now opt out of receiving gifts on AO3, as well as opt out of allowing your works to be invited to collections.
• We have improved admin tools to facilitate investigations by our Policy & Abuse team.
• Internally, we have updated our Code of Conduct to make it explicit that discrimination based on caste is not tolerated in the OTW.
• We also implemented methods for volunteers to contact and submit feedback to the Board anonymously by introducing a separate feedback form.

We are still committed to working towards giving you more control over how you experience the Archive going forward. To that end, we will be expanding blocking features to cover more user interactions, and further limiting how guest users can interact with you on the Archive.

What We're Working On

We have been reviewing the Archive's Terms of Service to help the Policy & Abuse team address different types of harassment. This review is still ongoing, but we hope to complete it soon. Once concluded, any planned changes to the Terms of Service will be made available for public comment in a dedicated news post.

Alongside this review, the Policy & Abuse team continues to improve and calibrate their internal policies about harassment and hate speech in icons, user names, and other non-story elements. The team strives to remain vigilant and flexible in order to respond appropriately to new harassment vectors as needed.

Internally, back in 2021 the OTW opened recruitment for a Diversity Consultant Research Officer (DCRO). They began their work in 2022, contacting internal stakeholders and researching firms. The DCRO hopes to finish their internal studies by September, and has already begun to investigate potential contractors.

We will keep you updated on how these projects are progressing. Please continue reading to learn more about how we plan to communicate these updates.

Communications Improvements

One of the areas the OTW has been working to improve in is transparency in communication. We know how important these topics are to our users, and we will be trying to better keep you informed about what we're doing to combat and prevent racism in the OTW and on AO3.

One change we have already implemented is to provide quarterly updates on our diversity work during OTW Board of Directors public meetings. These meetings take place on Discord and can be attended by anyone. There are a few ways you can know when a meeting is coming up:

• Keep an eye on the OTW's Twitter account—every meeting is announced at least one week in advance.
• Join our Discord server—as soon as a meeting is scheduled, a notification will appear in the meeting channel.
• Subscribe to the Board Calendar so that new meetings will show directly on your personal calendar.

Additionally, we will be making an effort to include all information discussed in these meetings in the OTW's monthly newsletter. The newsletter will also provide smaller updates between meetings whenever possible.

We understand how frustrating these delays have been, and we deeply apologize. We remain committed to making our spaces more welcoming and safe for all users. We sincerely thank you for sticking with us as we strive to improve. Your feedback on this and any other matters is welcome and valued, always.

The OTW Board of Directors can be reached for direct feedback and further suggestions via email.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors regrets to announce that Heather McGuire has resigned from her role as a Director. Heather was elected to her seat in 2022 and her resignation is effective as of the 21st of May 2023. Her seat will be filled in the upcoming election.

We would like to thank Heather for her service as a member of the Board and for her years as an OTW volunteer. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) Board of Directors is saddened to announce that Jess White has resigned from her role as a Director for personal reasons. Jess was elected to her seat in 2020 and her resignation is effective as of the 5th of November 2022. As her term was set to end in a few months, her seat will be left open until next year's OTW elections.

We would like to thank Jess for her service as a member of the Board and for her many years as an OTW volunteer. We wish her all the best in her future endeavors.

Since May 3rd, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) — the nonprofit behind AO3, Fanlore, and other projects — has been dealing with malicious attacks aimed at the organization and its volunteers. We wanted to share with you some of what's been happening, as well as what we're doing to contain it, and how it may affect our response times to your inquiries and our workload in general. Above all, we need to ask for your patience, because these are complicated times for all of us at the OTW.

An unknown attacker has been sending our volunteers threatening emails with illegal child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which has been reported to several law enforcement authorities.

These attacks have not affected AO3 user accounts or accounts on any other OTW projects, or OTW donor data. At this time we have no reason to believe that emails or other private user data whatsoever associated with AO3 or any of our other projects have been exposed to any external bad actors.

We've already alerted the relevant authorities, and we're seeking legal advice on how best to proceed. Protecting our volunteers and safeguarding this investigation is our top priority right now, which means we've shut down a number of internal tools necessary to do our work effectively. This was done to better protect our volunteers from further threats.

As a consequence of this, changes and announcements that had been planned for the next few weeks are likely to be delayed. You can expect delays in response times for all OTW teams. Please note:

• AO3 Tag Wrangling's planned changes for Dream SMP fandoms will be delayed. New tags will not be wrangled until a later time.
• AO3 Support, Open Doors, and Policy & Abuse responses are all likely to take much longer than usual. The same applies to Fanlore teams.
• Responses to queries sent to OTW Legal, including DMCA Takedown Notices, may be delayed.
• OTW donation gifts may be delayed.
• OTW recruitment is suspended until further notice.
• The OTW's social media posting schedule will be reduced for most outlets.

There have been no changes to the following:

• The OTW election timeline will remain unchanged.
• AO3 invitations for new users are being sent out normally.

Please be patient with us at this time. We are trying our best to keep our projects running as smoothly as possible while also keeping our volunteers — without whom none of these projects would exist — safe. Thank you so much for your understanding and support.

(One final note: we've disabled comments on all our news posts for the time being for security reasons. If you need to get in touch with us, please use the Support and Feedback form, but bear in mind that responses will likely be delayed.)